Kara
I found Zoey where I’d left her on the couch. I made us both a cup of coffee before my shift at the bookstore. I was working part-time during the day and doing an adult education course two nights a week. I wanted more for myself. Sure, working around books all day was great. We sold vintage books as well as brand new ones. The smell that permeated the air was one of my favourites. But if anything, I wanted to own my own shop, not work for someone else. My boss was great, but I’d always wanted to work for myself. I’d been given an inheritance from an aunt that had died a couple of years ago and I still hadn’t spent it. I’d rather split the rent with Zoey for the house, and then when everything was in place, I’d buy a place to set up my own bookstore. I wanted to do more than just sell books. I wanted a room where mothers could come with their children and read to them. I’d seen a similar room in the local library until they were forced to change it, as it wasn’t making them any revenue. I also wanted a quiet room where people could come and study if they needed to. The local library was actually closing, which was a real shame, but that made it even more important to have more bookstores. I’d sell everything from The Velveteen Rabbit to the Karma Sutra if I could, and there’d be textbooks for students. I just needed to figure the whole thing out. I hadn’t got a business plan yet, not fully formed, anyway. I was on my way to getting what I wanted, though.
Zoey was just waking as I entered the lounge. She looked up at me and smiled.
“Is one of those for me?” she asked, gesturing at the mugs in my hand.
I handed her the mug I’d bought her at Disneyland, it had Cinderella on. Zoey might be many things, but at heart she was just a scared little girl whose fiancé had left her and she was trying to fill the gap he left in her life. Yes, she was demanding; yes, she was a bitch to people, but she was also so much more than that. And more than just a pretty face too. She was intelligent, and put that to good use in her job as a civil servant. She made good money too, which was a bonus. Her family weren’t all that wealthy, they were comfortable but didn’t have the money to help their only daughter out, especially after they had paid a lot of money out for a wedding that never happened and they couldn’t get a lot of their deposits back. We rented somewhere cheap in the city and could easily afford it between the two of us. Neither of us could have afforded it alone, hence why we moved in together. I’d thought that would change when she married Reid, but now he’d left, we were back to the way things used to be. Well, we were if you didn’t count the sex noises with the random guys, many of whom didn’t get a repeat performance. I was fed up of it, but truth be told, I wanted my friend to be happy, and this was her way of working her frustration out of her system. I just have to keep hoping that one day it will come to an end, that she’ll settle down with someone again, or find that she’s happy being single. As for me, I’m too busy for men. I’m either working, or doing my course, and when I’m doing neither of those, I like going to gigs and seeing local bands.
I sat on the couch next to Zoey and drank my coffee. She didn’t say much, but that didn’t matter. She was my best friend and we could sit in comfortable silence. I knew she didn’t have work, so I wondered what she planned to do with her day off.
“I’m heading out this morning for a job interview,” Zoey said into the silence.
“Are you not happy in your job? You haven’t mentioned anything before.” I was shocked, to say the least. I wondered what had prompted the change.
“No, I’m staying in my current job, I just want to work a few night shifts to make a bit of extra cash.”
“Oh, okay.” I drained the last of my coffee and got up to get dressed.
“It’s just to help pay the bills.”
“We’re doing fine, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, it’s not that.” She scrubbed a hand over her face. “It’s just that you’re doing your business degree as well as working, and I feel like I don’t contribute enough.”
“That’s not true, Zoey. You work hard, sixty hour weeks from time to time. How will you even have enough time for a second job?”
“I’ll make time. I need something to occupy me in the evenings, something more than random sex. You’ve got to have noticed that I don’t see a guy more than once.”
Well, I sure hadn’t expected to hear that.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean anything, you’re just working Reid out of your system.”
“Random sex isn’t the way to go about it, though. I thought it was, but it’s getting old and fast. I want to settle down, get married, and have children, all the normal things a woman my age wants. But I also want a better car than the old beater I drive, and I want to own my own home instead of renting with my best friend. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I just mean that I want more from my life, you know?”
“I know exactly what you mean, Zo, I want the same things. That’s why I’m doing my business degree and trying to make a business plan for the place I plan to run one day.”
“See, that’s what I mean. You have a plan in place. It may take a while to achieve it, you know, until your degree is complete, but you have dreams and goals that you are well on your way to making reality.”
“I’m far from having my perfect happy ending, Zo. I may have plans for the future on the business side of things, but I don’t have a man. You kind of need one of those for the marriage and kids, you know!”
“Oh I know that all right,” she sighed.
I suddenly felt bad for Zoey. I hadn’t realised she felt so strongly about those kinds of things. Sure, I’d known she was marrying Reid, so she was settling down. But I hadn’t realised she wanted children. She’d always said what a nuisance her sister’s children were. There seemed to be some things that I didn’t know about Zoey after all.
***
After my shift at the bookstore, I walked around town for a while. I grabbed a coffee to go from Starbucks and wandered around a little aimlessly. I didn’t have a plan for the rest of the day, but I didn’t want to go straight home. I decided to sit on a bench overlooking a little stream.
As I sat watching people milling around, I saw a familiar figure in the distance. I didn’t want it to be him because that meant several things; firstly that he was back in town—obvious, I know—also that I would have to decide whether to tell Zoey, and it meant having to confront my own feelings as a way of moving on. Zoey might have loved him, but that didn’t mean that what I felt for him was any less, and it didn’t mean that it hadn’t hurt me when he’d moved out of town and not looked back. I’d been in love with Reid Marks for as long as I could remember. But his parents and Zoey’s were friends, and had set them up on a date, then things had gone from there. I could never admit my feelings to either of them out loud, it would serve no purpose.